And Night Shall Reveal The Color Of Your Fear
by StillWaters1
Summary: "So even now, at the biblical realization of the world's end, with the imminent coming of perpetual blackness, Dean still saw white."  A reflection on what really haunts the brothers at the end of the fifth season.


Title: And Night Shall Reveal The Color Of Your Fear

Author: Still Waters

Fandom: Supernatural

Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

Summary: "So even now, at the biblical realization of the world's end, with the imminent coming of perpetual blackness, Dean still saw white." A reflection on what really haunts the brothers at the end of the fifth season.

Notes: This was one of those ideas that hit me just as I woke up one morning - not part of my dreams, but just on the edge of a long night of vivid images. The story is meant to be grammatically fluid, focusing on the _feel_ of the emotions and events – an exploration of the colors woven into the darkness of the Winchesters' lives. For those who have not seen the fifth season, the end of this piece focuses heavily on 5x04 (The End) and 5x22 (Swan Song). I hope I did the characters and emotions justice. This story was previously titled "Their Nightmares Were Bright" – a title that never felt quite right to me, hence the change. Thank you for reading.

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><p>Their nightmares were bright.<p>

Brilliant, blinding, saturated color.

They were raised in black, from the shadows of death, to the dark evils of the supernatural. They had seen the all-consuming inky blackness of possession drown human eyes, an irrevocable toxicity of the soul; had been chilled by the ominous blackness of exorcised demons - thick, choking clouds of darkness clawing for freedom from an even blacker prison. They had every reason, more than most, to fear the darkness, because they_ knew_ just how deep it went. But _because_ they knew, their subconscious had little fear. The darkness was normal, understood. It was home.

They _lived_ in the nightmares of others.

And so, in typically _a_typical Winchester fashion, their nightmares weren't muted shrouds of black, images smothered in blindness and fear, bled dry of all but light's crushing absence, darkness without end.

No, Sam and Dean dreamed in Technicolor.

And their nightmares were bright.

Sam's exploded with orange – the bright, deadly core of fire. The fires that claimed the mother he never knew and the woman who never knew _him_, but loved him despite his deception, loved him for what he _wished_ he could be. The orange shock of the muzzle flash as he shot Dean under Meg's control. The inhuman, unnatural, blinding/dark of Hell's orange smog shadowing Dean's eyes, the same reflection that taunted Sam from the eyeless orbits of Ruby's hellhounds as they consumed the only other good person in his life, a fire no less deadly for its anthropomorphized name. A fire Sam shouldn't have been able to see in Hell's invisible maulers, but one he knew Dean would never admit that _he_ saw as well. Sam's nights, days…..the brief, comforting black of closed eyelids mercilessly, continuously, stripped away - overly saturated, supernatural orange burning the nightmares into every cell, branding every atom. It was the constant orange haze tinting the corners of his vision, the constant threat of the incinerating fire of his destiny, all while _knowing_ that he was no phoenix, that there would be no new birth from those ashes, no redemption in that immolation. None of the peace gentle sparks of orange brought to lost, wandering bones. It was just relentless, supercharged orange, seared with horrific screams that could have been his own….and all it left Sam with was orange and pain…..wondering how an overly saturated color could _hurt_ so damn much.

Dean's nightmares gleamed white – the traditional color of innocence, purity, and the sacred, warped into visuals that made "do not be afraid" a laughable platitude. The white of bones, of salt, of the light he sent lost spirits to find without really knowing why. The white, latent goodness he tortured out of even the darkest souls at Alastair's command. White teeth, dipped in red, juxtaposed sharply against a face more familiar than his own as Sam's cheeks went from transparent white to sickly gray/purple in the mud of Cold Oak. A white-shoed foot snapping his own neck, an action repeated just as brutally, without a touch, as everything Dean _was_ died as he looked up….to the unnatural, blinding white suit of Lucifer….of Lucifer _wearing_ Sam, of the irony of how that overly angelic white fabric managed only to _highlight_ the devil's darkness – supernatural white destroying Sam's natural inner light, his goodness, his faith. Seeing the white nature of his Sam disappear, inner color extinguished by an overwhelming, outer mockery. The suddenly foreign white of teeth, of eyes, once Dean's _life_, by a blaspheming fallen angel with the devil's name; of Lucifer manipulating Sam's facial expressions, his voice, his eyes - infusing evil into the most minute twitch of the lips, the threatening calm rippling through a measured, breathy voice, the disturbingly spirit-like fractional tilt of the head….a white-clad bastard vying for sympathy while desecrating the one thing sacred to Dean Winchester – his family. Sam.

But the nightmares didn't stop with opened eyes. They weren't terrible visions of "_what if_", but rather the horror-infused recollections and augmentations of "_what had been_." And every day their eyes were open they created new nightmares, lived through the unbearable fear only to know that it would be replayed mercilessly, in vivid, painful, supernatural color behind closed lids. Over and over again.

So even now, at the biblical realization of the world's end, with the imminent coming of perpetual blackness, Dean still saw white.

With one eye swollen shut and the other nearly there, Dean was assaulted with visions of Lucifer's unholy glow as, with Sam's fists, he beat Dean toward a darkness that would have been like going home. But Dean also saw the flash of brilliant, _comforting_ white, the light of Sam's true nature, as it wrestled control from Lucifer, heard the light in that shocked, struggling, exhausted, _real_ voice assuring Dean that the _right_ white was in control. Saw the apology in the whites of Sam's eyes. Saw the darkness of the pit open and saw Sam, just _Sam_, closing his eyes, arms spread in sacrifice, falling back to bury the unholy white of Lucifer's lies within the unending black of the ravaged earth…..and as known, understood black swallowed evil, nightmare-laden white, Dean could find no victory in the emptiness that echoed through destiny's final cries.

Dean had seen Sam's fire-singed eyes, saw his little brother close those eyes and fall into his own worst nightmare. _Their _worst nightmare. And Dean knew that, while the world may have escaped its _own_ nightmare today, that _his_ had only begun.

Blood colored Dean's hands, dripping from his swollen, ravaged face to slide off lax fingers into the thirsty mud at his knees.

White would haunt him tonight. Orange would haunt Sam for eternity. And the black of darkness no longer held any comfort.

Dean looked down at his hands, smeared what was left of his life between shaking fingertips.

And was left with red.


End file.
